Paddy Ashdown once joked that he was the only leader of a major party to have presided over an opinion poll rating represented by an asterisk, denoting that no discernible support could be found anywhere in the land. While he was granting himself poetic licence in the telling of that anecdote – it was an occasional foible of one polling company only to list the Tory and Labour scores on the front page of its survey results – it was indeed the case that Lib Dem poll ratings of five per cent or less peppered the early stages of his leadership.
This week an opinion poll by Savanta ComRes recorded that same risible rating of five per cent for the Lib Dems under current leader Sir Ed Davey, compared to 38 per cent for Labour and 41 per cent for the Conservatives.
At a time when the Tories have been enduring torture by Covid and Labour has also been beset by dire reputational issues that really isn’t very good.
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